Talc lawyer rebuts J&J bid to disqualify him, denounces ‘smear tactics’

Dec 20 (The Justice Now) Johnson & Johnson’s – Andrew Birchfield and his firm, Beasley Allen, said in a filing at Trenton, New Jersey, federal court on Tuesday that J&J blamed them for failing to defeat its two attempts to resolve the bankruptcy talc dispute and bankruptcy court, which the courts threw out. The company has stated that it intends to file for bankruptcy three times in the near future; it “seeks to get this court to eliminate them as obstacles,” the filing said.

“J&J has no credibility in this case due to the firm’s blatant practice of filing bankruptcy in bad faith and ad hominem attack on opposing counsel and their unsubstantiated attempts to disqualify anyone who does not agree with the practice,” they wrote. “Practising legal practice is a career, not a fight in the locker room.”

J&J’s global vice president for litigation, Erik Haas, said in a statement that the document “does not contest or attempt to provide any pretentious reason for their illegal arrangement, since there is no such thing.”

“We anticipate an exhaustive investigation and swift condemnation of their unjust collaboration,” he said.

The company then, last month, requested U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp to either ban Birchfield as well as Beasley Allen or remove them from the steering committee of plaintiffs, which plays an important role in coordinating attorneys of plaintiffs’ activities and shaping the strategies.

Shipp is in charge of a massive mass tort case that covers over 50,000 lawsuits alleging asbestos contained in the company’s presently discontinued talc products causes cancer, primarily in women who have cancer of the ovary. Shipp has stated that the talc product is safe and doesn’t contain asbestos.

J&J stated that it was former Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath partner James Conlan, who worked on the talc lawsuit for J&J for more than two years before stepping down from his legal practice in 2022, formed an “alliance” with Birchfield that aimed to defeat J&J’s bankruptcy strategy based on the confidential information Conlan discovered during his work with the company.

Conlan did not immediately reply to a query for clarification.

After having left Faegre Drinker, Conlan founded Legacy Liability Solutions, which advertises itself as a company that helps businesses get rid of their mass tort liability by buying them out after they have been split into an entirely new entity.

J&J announced it was in motion. Conlan, earlier in the year, offered Legacy to purchase J&J’s liabilities in talc and pay them around $19 billion, double the amount the company proposed in its bankruptcy plan, which a court rejected in July. Conlan informed J&J that Birchfield agreed with the offer, as stated in the motion.

Birchfield, as well as Beasley Allen, stated in Tuesday’s report that Conlan “neither divulged nor shared confidential or protected information about attorney-clients” with the two. They claimed that the assertion was “premised solely on speculation and speculation.”

The filing also stated that Conlan and Legacy, which “offered the possibility of acquiring J&J’s liability for talc for the duration of time, thereby giving J&J the certainty it wants,” were not actually antagonists to J&J, so there was no conflict.

The litigation involving talc was suspended for about two years as J&J tried to resolve the issue through bankruptcy. The company recently settled several cases, claiming that exposure to talc caused the cancer known as mesothelioma. These cases comprise just a fraction of claims.